"SVE" 2006 Obituary

SVEET o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-03-03 published
KNOWLTON,
Anne (née
MORROW)
(Former Secretary at Ionview Public School, Scarborough)
After a short stay in hospital, on Thursday, March 2, 2006 at
the Lakeridge Health Centre in Port Perry, at age 86. Anne (nee
MORROW,) beloved wife of Frank
KNOWLTON of Port Perry. Loved
mother of Frank Kenneth
KNOWLTON of Port Perry. Loving grandmother
of Christopher, Cassandra, Nicholas and Katherine. Dear aunt
of Sharon EDWARDS,
MarylynREDDICK, Jim
STEPHENSON and Bobby
MORROW.
The family of Anne
KNOWLTON will receive Friends at the
Wagg Funeral Home, "McDermott-Panabaker Chapel," 216 Queen Street
in Port Perry (905-985-2171), on Sunday, March 5th from 2-4 and
7-9 p.m. A Service to celebrate her life will be held in the
Chapel on Monday, March 6th at 11 a.m. with Reverend Elaine
SVEET
officiating. If desired, memorial donations may be made by cheque
to the Canadian Diabetes Association. On-line condolences may
be left at www.waggfuneralhome.com

SVEINNSDOTTIR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-02-27 published
Pearl PALMASON,
Musician (1915-2006)
Daughter of Icelandic immigrants took childhood lessons from
her brother, Sandra
MARTIN writes. Later, she broke gender barriers
to become one of Canada's first female solo violinists and a
Toronto Symphony Orchestra concertmaster
By Sandra MARTIN,
Page S7
This is a story about two women and a violin. In 2003, Judy
KANG
needed an instrument worthy of her prodigious talents. Pearl
PALMASON, a trailblazing musician who broke gender barriers at
the Toronto Symphony Orchestra back in the 1940s, could no longer
play her precious 1747 Gagliano violin to her own demanding standards.
She agreed to lend it to the Canada Council so that younger fingers
could make it sing.
"I've always wanted a warm, dark, deep quality in a violin,"
Ms. KANG, 26, said this week. She loved the sound of the Gagliano
and the way it made her feel when she was playing it. "It made
me think I could really push my limits."
Ms. PALMASON went to the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto to hear
Ms. KANG play during a competition and to watch the bow being
passed from one dedicated player to another. But Ms.
KANG was
far from the only female musician to be touched by Ms.
PALMASON
through her long career as a violinist.
"I saw her when I was seven years old at Maple Leaf Gardens at
a concert with Fritz Kreisel as the soloist," said violinist
Andrea HANSEN. "I couldn't take my eyes off this redhead -- this
beautiful regal person -- sitting there in a flowing black gown
playing the violin with the Toronto Symphony. I was just smitten."
It was 1947 and Ms.
HANSEN, who had already been playing the
violin for four years, knew what she wanted to do for a career.
Nearly 30 years later, the two women became neighbours, Friends
and colleagues in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. "We were the
only two Scandinavian ones in the orchestra," said Ms.
HANSEN
who is of Finnish descent. "I was even more in awe then because
of the kind of person she was. She opened the door for the rest
of us."
Pearl PALMASON was born during the First World War in Winnipeg.
She was the third of four children of Icelandic immigrants Sveinn
and Growa PALMASON (née
SVEINNSDOTTIR.)
Her architect father
prospered in construction, but the Depression wiped him out financially
and the family moved to a farm.
No matter how stretched they were, the
PALMASONs always found
money for violin lessons for their eldest son Palmi, who was
six years older than Pearl. He studied with the violin builder
and teacher Olafur Thorsteinsson in Husavick, Manitoba, and then
with John Waterhouse in Winnipeg before becoming a member of
the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.
Palmi would walk five miles home from his lessons and then teach
everything he had learned to his little sister Pearl. From the
time she was nine years old, she was officially her brother's
student, acquiring both her Associate, Toronto Conservatory of
Music and Licentiate, Royal Schools of Music qualifications and
winning four medals from the Toronto Conservatory of Music for
having the highest examination marks in the country.
They both performed at the Manitoba Music Competition Festival
in Winnipeg and played with what would later be called the Winnipeg
Symphony Orchestra.
"My uncle Palmi would perform very respectably and get high marks,
but never win, and Pearl always won in her class, and she would
win overall," said her niece Valerie
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON.
She was awarded
both the Rose Bowl and
an Aikens Memorial Trophy and won a scholarship
at age 18 to study for three years with Elie
SPIVAK, concertmaster
of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and a teacher at the Royal
Conservatory of Music.
In the late 1930s she went to England to study with Carl Flesch,
the Hungarian-born violinist and also played solo concerts in
Iceland in 1938 and
in London. Years later she described Mr.
Flesch as "a genius with the violin but not in his practical
life." She also complained that he "had pupils from all over
the world and he wiped the floor with every one of them."
She returned to Toronto when the Second World War broke out and
studied briefly with Kathleen
PARLOW, before moving to New York
to be instructed by Demetrious Dounis. She found him secretive
and mysterious. "You went in one door and out through another,"
she remembered. Apparently, concert masters studied privately
with him and didn't want anybody to know so "it was very hush-hush."
In 1941, she left New York and joined the Toronto Symphony Orchestra
at $25 a week for a five-month season. "The burning question,"
she said later, "was how to survive the other seven months of
the year and pay the rent." Even so, she managed to find the
money to buy a violin made in 1666, that had previously been
owned by violinist Alexander Chuhaldin, and was thought (incorrectly)
to be a Stradivarius.
Ms. PALMASON was married in the 1940s, after she joined the Toronto
Symphony Orchestra, and supported her husband who lived in New
York and studied with her former teacher, Dr. Dounis. By all
accounts, the marriage was disastrous and quickly ended. On September
19, 1948, she performed a solo recital at the Town Hall in New
York. "A metropolitan debut of promise," concluded the Musical
Courier.
She considered pursuing a career as a concert violinist, but
decided against it, partly because, as she said later, "you have
to be absolutely great to be a concert performer and I knew I
wasn't." There was another reason: the loneliness of the long-distance
concert circuit. "I wouldn't have all this -- my home, my possessions
and my Friends around me."
Essentially, Ms.
PALMASON chose career over marriage in an era
when it was extremely difficult to have both. "In those days,
what happened to women violin soloists was that they got married
and had children. Their career was put on hold for a while and
then they tried to make a comeback, but it was never the same,"
she said in an interview in the 1950s.
Instead, she built a life around music, travel, a huge circle
of Friends and her sister Ruby's children. "When my mother died,
Pearl made the announcement that she now had three children,"
said her niece Valerie
THOMPSON/THOMSON/TOMPSON/TOMSON. "We were all past the age of
majority, but she said she was adopting us."
By the mid 1950s, she was one of eight women playing with the
Toronto Symphony Orchestra and was the first female to serve
as assistant concert master and to slip into the senior role
when her male colleague Hyman
GOODMAN was unavailable. From 1960
to 1962, she played principal second violin. She also played
with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Symphony (after having
confronted the conductor about his male-only hiring policy),
the Singing Stars Orchestra, the Hart House Orchestra and the
York Concert Society group.
An article by Florence
SCHILL in The Globe and Mail in October
of 1954, under the tag "Earning a Living," focused on Ms.
PALMASON.
The column began by quoting Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961). Apparently,
the famous British conductor liked to explain the paucity of
women in his orchestra by saying: "If they're pretty, they bother
the men; if they aren't, they bother me."
Jack ELTON, manager of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, denied
there was discrimination against women. "We have never said:
Let's not take her because she's a woman -- especially if they
look like Pearl." And she was definitely a looker, with flaming
red hair, usually called Titian in newspaper clippings from the
era, striking blue eyes and luscious red lips.
In 1960, she bought the Gennaro Gagliano violin with the rich
velvet sound for $3,500 (U.S.) -- about the price of a new car
at the time, according to violin-maker and restorer Ric
HEINL
of the Toronto firm George Heinl and Co. It was made in Naples,
Italy, in 1747 by Gennaro Gagliano, who was arguably the best
in a large family of expert violin-makers.
A salesman for the Rembrandt Wurlitzer company in New York brought
the violin to Toronto to show to a potential client, who declined
to purchase it. Ms.
PALMASON fell in love with it "at first play"
and insisted the instrument wasn't going back, according to Mr.
HEINL.
The violin is now insured for $220,000.
After her farewell concert in front of 10,000 people at Ontario
Place in August of 1981, she told The Globe that she had "spent
more of my life at Massey Hall than at home." Although she had
reached retirement age, she had no intention of putting her violin
away. She played with the Canadian Opera Company orchestra from
1981 to 1985, and continued to teach privately, play with chamber
groups, give recitals with her string group. In 1987 she became
concertmaster of the Oakville Symphony Orchestra.
Ms. PALMASON lived in a spacious home in North Toronto until
the mid-to-late 1990s when she moved into a large retirement
condominium with her Boesendorfer piano and her beloved violins.
She continued to have "drinkie winkies" (Beefeater gin with a
splash of tonic and one ice cube) with Friends and gave at least
two concerts in her condo for her neighbours.
She practised every day, but after she broke her ankle in 2002,
life became harder. After she agreed to lend her Gagliano to
the Canada Council instrument bank, she played every day on her
"second" violin. A year ago in January, Ms.
KANG, who had been
sending Ms.
PALMASON letters regularly, paid the woman she calls
"her angel" a visit. "She was very warm and very sweet," Ms.
KANG said. "It was really moving to see her playing the violin,"
she said, and "inspiring to see somebody who loves music so much
that she plays every day just to have it in her life."
Pearl PALMASON was born on October 2, 1915, in Winnipeg. She
died in Toronto of heart failure on February 17, 2006, after
having suffered a stroke in September. She was 90. She is survived
by a niece, two nephews and their families.